How Barbie Shaped An Entire Generation of Feminists: I Can Be Anything I Want to Be!

2 min read

1 hour ago

Listen

Press enter or click to view image in full size

“There are no female musketeer!”

“Well, not yet!”

Well, I bought Corinne’s doll not long after she dropped that bomb. I didn’t think of that much, I just thought the combination of pink and a musketeer costume matched really well, and the pink sword? A cape that could be a skirt? A total fashion statement.

17 years later, Barbie and the Three Musketeer movie clip went through my for you page on TikTok. It got me smiling so hard that I remembered I had an entire complete collections of Barbie dolls (shout out to Ayah and Mama who always stops by PIM’s Toys City). One of them was the ‘You Can Be Anything’ doll. Again, I didn’t think of that much, I just thought Barbie is super cool for doing stuffs I used to think girls weren’t supposed to do.

And it got me thinking — well yes, I can be anything I want!

I can be a marketing communication intern, but I can be a writer who poured her heart out only at night. I can be a linguistic geek, but a soft soul for a sad and sappy classics like Austen’s books. I can speak wherever and whenever I wanted to, but I can chose silence as my answer. I can be, me.

Some part of me believe Barbie did a pretty good job pushing young me to that ideas.

Feminism is a hard word for people who’s not familiar to that concept. To them, it’s radical, it’s women-centrist, and scary. But we’re far from that, feminism is such a beautiful word to say. In summary, Indrawati briefly said feminism is an effort made by women to reach a certain societal revolution by centering their concerns and formulate strategies to empower others. In other words, feminism has a big transformative function in society — feminism helped women enhanced their life quality by being able to chose upon what they want (Indrawati, 2024).

I was such a foolish for thinking I am very new to the concept of feminism. Barbie thought me, 17 years earlier, when I watched Corinne fought her way to be the first girl musketeer. Barbie thought me, 16 years earlier, when she flew to Paris and build her own fashion empire. And the ‘You Can Be Anything’ dolls? A good way to tell young girls to pursue their dreams — astronaut, veterinarian, doctor, world leader, race car driver, rockstar, and everything else!

So, you can be anything you want to be! Cheers to these beloved old commercial that shaped my entire personality:

Reference:

Indrawati, Yoselin. “Philosophy of Feminism: The Root, Evolution and the Impact Towards Current Business from Communication Perspective.” AJEMB: American Journal of Economic and Management Business, vol. 3, no. 6, 2024.